Blogs
October 14, 2025 / October 14, 2025 by Intelliguard
With rising threats of drug counterfeiting, diversion, and waste—and the final Drug Supply Chain Security Act (DSCSA) deadline taking effect in November 2025—the future success and stability of our healthcare supply chain depend on achieving end-to-end medication visibility. This requires stakeholders, such as drug manufacturers, distributors, and dispensers, to modernize their operations to meet the growing demand for specialty and critical medications, ensuring they are available for the patients who need them.Regulations exist to ensure that medications are safe once they enter the market and that pharmacists ordering from various manufacturers can feel confident in their purity and quality upon receipt. But how can this be done most effectively with all the moving parts without our pharmaceutical supply chain? That’s where RFID comes into play.
RFID is a wireless technology that uses radio waves to automatically identify and track tags attached to objects. Unlike traditional barcodes that require humans to complete line-of-sight scanning, RFID technology offers greater than 99% accuracy without the need for visual contact with each medication, making it significantly more reliable and efficient in clinical settings, especially when hospitals have multiple sites or stand-alone centers.RFID provides clarity within the complex and highly regulated pharmaceutical supply chain by ensuring that every vial, tray, or unit-dose medication is checked for quality and safety at each point of custody. Key components of this technology include:
Hospitals, pharmacies, and manufacturers are increasingly adopting RFID to improve tracking and management of pharmaceuticals—especially high-cost, high-risk medications like specialty drugs or controlled substances. In oncology, for example, RFID helps track medication movement, prevent mix-ups, and manage tight inventory windows. As noted in RFID Journal:
“According to recent industry reports, while RFID adoption in hospital pharmacies still hovers around 30%, that number is climbing, driven in part by specialty areas like oncology where the ROI is highest and the stakes are greatest.”
RFID data plays a critical role in powering advanced analytics and real-time tracking. The integration of RFID with healthcare supply chain software systems— such as SAP, Oracle, and SCM Cloud—is necessary to determine trends and work toward long-term supply chain stabilization.
SCM software can analyze disruptions to the supply chain before they even happen, which is often referred to as “predictive analytics” or “trend forecasting.” The software enables cost-effective distribution of medication and critical supplies. RFID acts as an added layer of protection and security to ensure critical medications are where they need to be when they’re needed most. This is achieved through the concept of interoperability, which means data collected and stored via RFID is visible across various systems, including materials management information systems and inventory systems used by pharmacies.
Current supply chain challenges can be grouped into five main categories: limited visibility into what is moving where, outdated processes, inefficiencies in tracking expirations, inability to respond quickly to drug recalls, and increased risk of counterfeit or diverted (missing or stolen) medications.
The most valuable reason to have drugs RFID-tagged throughout the medication journey is for item-level traceability, as this directly coincides with evolving regulations set forth by the DSCSA in 2025.
Due to evolving regulations and the need for inventory transparency, RFID is a practical and optimal solution to ensure safety and compliance. The DSCSA requires serialization, traceability, and verification of each medication at the unit level. This can easily be achieved and maintained with RFID technology. The data collected via RFID tags provides chain of custody logs for audit purposes. Additionally, it supports integration with Electronic Product Code Information Services (known as EPCIS) as well as other interoperable systems that hospitals currently use.
Replacing manual processes with RFID automation can streamline operations, especially during audits, and expedite drug diversion investigations and recalls.
Source-tagged medications is a term used when drug manufacturers place RFID tags on medications before they are shipped out to distributors or directly to hospital pharmacies. The concept of pre-tagging medications is strategic for high-value, critical medications that are temperature-sensitive. That’s because RFID readers can collect data on temperature and notify software systems if a vial gets too warm.We are already seeing the industry shifting toward source-tagged medications. Today, drug manufacturer Fresenius Kabi offers 19 pre-tagged medications, which means these vials are tagged at the manufacturer level, ultimately helping to relieve dispensers and hospital pharmacy teams of the upfront labor. Cencora, a well-known drug distributor, is following suit by offering pre-tagged medications through its RFID tagging service. Cencora’s pre-tagged medications are compatible with any technology that can read RFID tags, such as pharmacy kit and tray management solutions like Intelliguard’s Mira Prep.
Additionally, pre-tagged medications support serialization and electronic recordkeeping as required by DSCSA. Additionally, RFID-tagged medications comply with GS1 global standards, which are critical to ensuring patient safety and supply chain efficiency. GS1 standards create a digital thread through their globalized standards that can trace products, proactively identify counterfeit or unsafe products, and facilitate effective recall management in the event of a national drug recall.
The Future of Our Healthcare Supply Chain in 2026 in Beyond DSCSA is accelerating the shift to a safer, smarter medication lifecycle. That’s why hospitals should partner with long-standing industry experts—like Intelliguard—who understand both RFID in healthcare and RFID in healthcare supply chain software to meet today’s needs and tomorrow’s challenges. Healthcare leaders who invest in RFID technology to optimize supply chain management processes will be equipped to succeed, especially when unexpected disruptions or critical drug shortages occur. Leveraging RFID-powered systems in supply chain management is not just a tactical upgrade; it’s a strategic investment to ensure compliance, enhance patient safety, and digitally transform the healthcare supply chain for the long term.
DSCSA is accelerating the shift to a safer, smarter medication lifecycle. That’s why hospitals should partner with long-standing industry experts—like Intelliguard—who understand both RFID in healthcare and RFID in healthcare supply chain software to meet today’s needs and tomorrow’s challenges. Healthcare leaders who invest in RFID technology to optimize supply chain management processes will be equipped to succeed, especially when unexpected disruptions or critical drug shortages occur.
Leveraging RFID-powered systems in supply chain management is not just a tactical upgrade; it’s a strategic investment to ensure compliance, enhance patient safety, and digitally transform the healthcare supply chain for the long term.